Zipper vet forms Caffeinated Games

Greg Chudecke, former lead tools engineer at Zipper Interactive, has founded new studio and social network Caffeinated Games.

The aim of the company, which plans to announce its first title in the coming week, is to cut out the publisher from the equation by distributing games directly to the consumer through the Caffeinated Games network.

"When you read postmortems about failed indie game companies you often run across a common thread, either the publisher didn't understand the concept or didn't market the game," said Chudecke.

"We at Caffeinated Games recognize publishers have to guess what games people will buy so it is often hard for them to sign off on new ideas. Also if your game doesn't fit into a specific genera they may have a hard time marketing the game.

"Our approach to overcome this is," he says, "is to make the games we want to play and then pitch those games directly to the gamers. Cut out the middle man if you will. The gamers after all are the ones who ultimately make your game a success."